Plan Was for Rickson Gracie, Not Royce Gracie, to Fight in Early UFCs

“No Holds Barred: Evolution” author Clyde Gentry, on “Rewind,”
discussing how Rickson
Gracie was originally expected to fight in the UFC instead of
Royce
Gracie:

“Make no mistake, Rorion [Gracie] controlled Royce. Even when I
interviewed Royce, Rorion insisted on being on the line. Anything
Royce said that he disagreed with or maybe he said something he
didn’t really like, he wanted to move onto another question or
something else. You’ve got to understand, Rorion came to this
country. … Then of course as things started to develop, that’s
where he brought over Royce to watch his kids and kind of help out
with the gym and some of these other things. That’s where that
trust developed, where Royce was looking at Rorion obviously for
guidance.

“Now Rickson, on the other hand, was a whole other story and
certainly had a lot more maturity and was certainly farther down
the game than Royce was. I think part of it was control. Part of it
was that Rickson really saw from a monetary standpoint, I should be
the one in there. Art [Davie] so graciously detailed a meeting
between himself, Rorion, Rickson and Royce. Royce basically,
[Davie] said, really didn’t want to continue with the event and was
really just kind of disinterested in the whole goings-on, as
opposed to Rickson and Rorion really coming to blows, not
physically mind you, just verbally, over the whole idea of Rickson
stepping in and how much money he would make and that type of
thing. ... Make no mistake, Rickson was the one at the very
beginning. I don’t think there’s any kind of revisionist history
that would tell me different.”